Beach closed

The beach across from our hotel has been closed for the past couple of days due to a shark attack.

Back in North America

We wondered how we would adjust coming back to North America. Would we experience reverse culture shock, which we hear can be worse than the initial culture shock? We seemed however to just fall back into our old lifestyle. Fortunately (or unfortunately) I did not forget how to do tasks that I used to do on a daily basis such as cooking, dishes and laundry. It was a little strange to drive a car again after months of no driving. Although we missed our friends in Colombo, we certainly enjoyed some aspects of the North American lifestyle.

The first place Rob and I went when we arrived in Hawaii was to the grocery store. We were overwhelmed by the quantity and selection of foods. We walked around likes kids in a candy store, quickly scooping up all the things we had been missing – Yoplait yogurt, chips & salsa, microwave popcorn, goldfish crackers, Quaker granola bars.

We took endless hot showers as hot water, as particularly unlimited hot water, is a rare commodity in Sri Lanka. We thoroughly enjoyed driving on well paved empty highways void of pedestrians, cats, dogs, cows and the like. I also tried to do as much breathing as possible as the air is much less polluted in Hawaii than in Sri Lanka.

Tokyo, Japan

My friend Javier (who is from Venezuela but is doing graduate work in Japan) met us at the Narita airport and took us in to Tokyo for our 30 hour stop over. When we arrived in Tokyo we felt as if we had traveled in to the future. The city and its citizens are so orderly, elegant, and high tech. Everyone looks so well kept and stylish (Rob and I were likely the worst dressed people in the city.) Tokyo is the most incredibly clean city and people are totally health conscious, wearing masks to prevent the spread of illness if they have a cold or the flu. (My hypochondriac sister would love it here!) Honestly the Tokyo seems like a utopian city in a futuristic cartoon.

The order of the city however, gave me a slight feeling of unease. It was a little too perfect – where were the poor? the garbage? Surely not everyone’s life here can be so magazine perfect!? Living in Colombo is WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). Life evolves on the streets and few aspects of human existence are hidden from the general public. Rob was initially blown away by the traffic in Tokyo in that it all moved along so perfectly without anyone honking their honks (very different form Colombo). Again however I felt a bit safer in Colombo where there is so much chaos that drivers must constantly be on the look out for the unexpected – cows, cats, dogs, stupid tourists looking the wrong way, cars driving in the wrong direction, etc. Here in Japan everything is so structured and rule based that I doubt if drivers are on the look out for anything out of the ordinary.

It was a beautiful day in Tokyo but totally freezing (2 degrees) and I was so cold in my light weight pants, jean jacket and fleece. Luckily Javier had an extra toque and lent me his gloves. We had such a great time with Javier! He took us to the high end shops where we saw beautifully decorated Christmas trees on the streets. I couldn’t believe that no one would steel the decorations (in comparison in Colombo people steel the grates in the sidewalks for scrape metal). Javier really wanted us to try Japanese food other than sushi so we went to a restaurant that served Shabu Shabu, which is a hot pot where you cook your own meet and vegetables and then the server adds noodles and you eat the broth as a soup. Then he took us on an evening cruise around the city which was incredibly beautiful, and to a mall to buy “hello kitty” merchandise for my sister.

Leaving Colombo

I was feeling a bit sad about leaving Colombo for Christmas because I know the next time I leave Sri Lanka it will be for good. We raced around all day finishing up reports and running last minute errands. Traffic in the city was horrendous and Ravi was 30minutes late picking us up (we were cutting it rather close as it was). There was a huge traffic jam and the drive to the airport was incredibly slow. At one point I thought that we were not going to make our flight. However Ravi to the rescue! In typical Sri Lankan style, he crossed over the meridian (the road to the airport is one of the few roads in Colombo that actually has any kind of divider or indications of lanes), and drove about 3 kms on the opposite side of the highway into on coming traffic with his hazard lights and his horn honking until we were out of the traffic jam.

When we got to the airport we found out that according to the new weight restrictions, 2 of our 4 bags were overweight. Rob shifted the contents of one overweight bag into one underweight bag. Now only one bag was over weight. However the second underweight bag was not really a bag but a box containing our Christmas tree which I was determined to bring to Hawaii for my family to enjoy. We could not stuff anything more into the box so Rob asked for a large plastic bag and crammed the box with the tree and a bunch of stuff from the overweight bag into the plastic bag and had it shrink wrapped. This wasted about 25 minutes of the agent’s time while we shifted the contents of our bags. With the new weight restrictions we will now travel with lighter bags - but more of them. Not really sure how this is saving the airline money. Anyways we made our flight and were soon on our way to Narita!

More violence

Recently there has been more violence in Sri Lanka. Several grenade attacks and two claymore attacks killed several soldiers. Some people are starting to get nervous about the war starting up again. A local colleague from work told us to pack our bags for Christmas holidays as if we were not coming back.

Party Party

As our friends in Canada know, Rob and I love to host parties. We haven’t done too much entertaining in Sri Lanka so far because we are a little out of our element (can’t buy the party food we would normally serve in Canada, not sure what would go over well with Sri Lankans, etc) but we decided that we wanted to have party before we left for Hawaii. We were a bit nervous throwing a Christmas party for our friends who are mostly Buddhist however Arosha reviewed our party plans and prevented us from offending people (well at least in regards to religious practices).

We have this roof top patio with a beautiful view of Colombo at our apartment complex that we were able to rent for the evening and we were able to hire catering, a bar tender (which Kumari arranged) and a DJ (my dream!). We also wanted to serve some of the food that we usually serve at our parties in Canada so Thusana helped us (spoiled - I know!) to make “party eggs” (deviled eggs) and veggies and dip (I had my mom bring us some ranch dressing as “dip” is non-existent here). The pièce de résistance was the homemade salsa (not available in Sri Lanka) and Tostitos that Kretchewan managed to buy through her connections with friends who have access to the American PX.

We decorated the patio with Christmas decoration and even managed to bring up our Christmas tree. The party was so super cool and everyone seemed to have a good time. I was not a good Sri Lankan hostess though. Instead of serving my guests and making sure that everyone got enough to eat, I visited with our friends, had a couple of beers, made an ass of myself trying to speak Sinhala and then danced for most of the night!

At 11:00 the manager requested that the music be turned down. By this time Sunranga was having trouble keeping his clothes on (well is was a warm evening) and when Rashan grabbed the DJ’s mic and belted out his rendition of Dancing Queen, we knew that it was time to bring the party to a close. Now feeling confident with our ability to host parties on more than one continent, we are already planning our going away party in march.

An auspicious time to claim the North

We went to a lovely dinner party at Dini and Brenda’s (Canadians working on a related project in SL) on Friday. At the end of the evening, we were warned by some of the local consultants that there could be problems and possibly violence on Sunday. The LTTE leader was making his annual speech and it just happened to be his birthday. Because the Sri Lankan president won the election on his birthday, there were some rumours that the head of the LTTE might claim the North on his birthday.

In SL many events are planned based on “auspicious times”. For example weddings occur at times that seem strange to us, such as a Wednesday afternoon because it is an auspicious time. Stores will have their grand opening at 9:23am on a Friday because it is an auspicious time. The paper publishes the auspicious times for the day and I guess some how you can know about them in advance. So the whole birthday theory seemed plausible.

We took off to the Blue Water hotel on Saturday with Laura, Dale (temporary consultant on our project) and his wife Jay (super fun). I thought that if there were problems it would be good to be stuck at the Blue Water! The LTTE speech however was uneventful and we all returned to Colombo as planned. The leader made long term threats but nothing in the immediate future.